grammer question

is this just a hypothetical question or are you now adding journalism to your many workplace roles and life experiences?

or are you just writing a letter of complaint to your local rag?

either way, [sic] is your friend.
 
Robbie G said:
-1

It was a verbal quote so there weren't any spellings.
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I disagree - even though I know of no authorative or formal rule regarding quotes from American English by a British English user. It's interesting but I don't think the fact that it is spoken rather than written has any bearing, in most cases the American spelling of a word indicates a phonetic difference between that and the English version, it may well be that the phoentic difference is important in this case.

For example from a formal point of view if you were to directly quote a French person then you would quote them in French and then offer an English interpretation. You provide the exact French quote as the English interpretation may not be possible to be exact.

I don't see anything different here other than there is no need to provide a translation as it is superfluos.
 
The point is - you +1'd a comment saying you can't change the spellings as it's a quote, when there were no spellings to be changed as the quote was verbal. Therefore a spoken vs. written quote must have a bearing as there's nothing to sic for a spoken quote, since you don't know what spelling the person speaking intended.

dazzerd said:
For example from a formal point of view if you were to directly quote a French person then you would quote them in French and then offer an English interpretation.
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I wouldn't :p. I'd just translate the French straight away. You don't see BBC News or the Telegragh writing quotes in Arabic then translating them, they just translate them straight away.
 
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dazzerd said:
I disagree - even though I know of no authorative or formal rule regarding quotes from American English by a British English user. It's interesting but I don't think the fact that it is spoken rather than written has any bearing, in most cases the American spelling of a word indicates a phonetic difference between that and the English version, it may well be that the phoentic difference is important in this case.

For example from a formal point of view if you were to directly quote a French person then you would quote them in French and then offer an English interpretation. You provide the exact French quote as the English interpretation may not be possible to be exact.

I don't see anything different here other than there is no need to provide a translation as it is superfluos.
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American isn't another language, at most it's a dialect and they have different spellings, but any phonetic differences are based on their accents, not the spelling of the words. If they used English spellings they'd still say them the exact same way.

As for quoting a French person, I really don't understand why you would quote them in French if you're writing for an English speaking audience, what they said in French is somewhat irrelevant if the person speaking has no idea what they're actually saying.

they *meant* is the important part, so that's where you'd use a translation instead. If you carried on with that logic, you'd quote a Japanese person in Japanese and in Kanji too, no, because that's how they'd likely written it, rather than say, Romaji?
 
You are relaying a verbal quote. Thus, you write it in the language of the rest of the article. In this case, UK English spelling.

As an aside, how the HELL did you wind up writing an article for, I assume, mass consumption when you can't even spell "grammar"? I seriously hope you aren't being paid for it.
 
[sic] if quoting written work, or just use UK English if you're transcribing speech.

Done my fair share of this to know :)
 
kylew said:
American isn't another language, at most it's a dialect and they have different spellings, but any phonetic differences are based on their accents, not the spelling of the words. If they used English spellings they'd still say them the exact same way.

As for quoting a French person, I really don't understand why you would quote them in French if you're writing for an English speaking audience, what they said in French is somewhat irrelevant if the person speaking has no idea what they're actually saying.

they *meant* is the important part, so that's where you'd use a translation instead. If you carried on with that logic, you'd quote a Japanese person in Japanese and in Kanji too, no, because that's how they'd likely written it, rather than say, Romaji?
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I was thinking academically, at university we were required to provide the actual quote as well as the chosen translation. The point being that the translation could lead to different interpretation of the original quote. The assumed audience being an academic who could understand the source language.

Clearly in the case of a newspaper this would be over the top, I was trying to draw an analogy but it was a poor one, as as you rightly point out the difference is dialectical but I would still quote using American spelling even if it was a speech.
 
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If I was copying the quote from an American source e.g. newspaper or magazine then I'd simply use the American English spelling from it and note that it was taken from "the Daily Bagel" or whatever which is sufficient to highlight to any readers why the spellings are in American English. If I was going to transcribe it from the original recording (no idea why I'd want to do that if a suitable transcript is already available) then I'd use the English spellings.
 
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